Getting to Know You

Posted by Merry in Merry's Blog      2 comments

Nov
4

So here we are, just a few days into Nanowrimo.  I’m working on the fifth chapter right now, in which Kadrian goes through the ceremony to become shaa’din. I’ve been looking forward to writing this part because it’s one of the first “big” scenes of the novel, and I’m hoping it translates itself to the written word as magically and sensually as it plays out in my mind. 

I do feel like I’m starting to get more attached to these characters, which is a good thing.  When I started writing SotG, Talon and Shasta were fully formed personalities in my head before I ever started writing.  It’s taken a little longer for me to get to know Erinda and Kade.  I think maybe it’s because the two of them are both really private people, in their own ways, and even I couldn’t fully suss either of them out at first, even when writing from inside their heads.  I’m getting there, though.  It feels almost like they’re slowly opening up to me, like I hope they will to readers – they’ve both started showing me sides of themselves that I had no idea I would be writing about.  Erinda’s passion for horses, for example, showed up out of the blue and I had to spend a good amount of time researching all manner of horse-related details in order to share her bits of the story. I know next to nothing about horses.  They’ve never really been my thing.  Yet there Erinda was, demanding I write them in for her, and who am I to disobey?

And they’ve also completely startled me by practically switching the personalities I’d planned for them.  I’d thought Kade was going to be tougher, more forthright and confident, perhaps with some control issues, while Erinda was going to be much more emotionally fragile and sensitive.  Instead, Kade’s turning out to be the fragile one, very gentle and accommodating in most respects, and Erinda’s a downright spitfire, surprising me sentence after sentence with her attitude and tenacity, particularly when I know how turbulent and tired her emotional state is.  Neither character is remotely as butch as Talon was in the first book (I don’t even know if it’s possible to get much butcher than a woman everyone believes is a man?) but neither are they as femme as Shasta.  They’ve become a much more middle-ground set of characters, still very complex and faceted but far less, I don’t know… stereotypical, I guess.

I’m also finally really starting to feel the angst, especially on Erinda’s side, that I was hoping would be there.  I’ve written a good chunk of angst thus far but it hasn’t yet fully grabbed me.  I don’t think I’ve entirely grasped yet the depth of emotional impact to these women, being separated from one another by duty and faith. But I don’t want to let it overshadow the other equally important emotional nuances of the story, either.

I’m realizing this book is really about a love triangle, with the Goddess Ithyris as the sort of third wheel. Thinking of her as a third wheel isn’t even giving her enough credit, really. Hard enough to choose between two women you love deeply… even harder when one of those women is the Goddess you were raised to worship and serve. Meanwhile, the other, mortal woman fits you like a puzzle piece, like you were born to spend your life interlocked with her, and surely that can’t be an accident, so seriously, WTF?  :P

Anyway, I’m really enjoying the journey with them thus far.  I’ve been listening to theme songs for each of them, a sort of personal anthem that really describes the state of their individual souls throughout the novel, and invariably when I listen to either one I’m given some spark of new detail I didn’t have before.  Will probably share more about those a little later… :)